Article

Name: «STRANGE LOVE» IN A «STRANGE CITY»: CONCERNING A THEME OF RUSSIAN POETRY AND PROSE

Authors: M. M. Gelfond, T. A. Shirshova

HSE Campus in Nizhny Novgorod / School of Literature and Intercultural, Communication, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation; Modern Philology in the Teaching of Literature at School», Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section

Abstract: The article features the practice of parallel reading of two texts – the poetic dialogue that was formed in the lyrics of Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam in 1916 and the novel Pure Monday (1944), whose main action relates to 1913, by Ivan Bunin. In the work it is clearly stated that, despite Bunin’s constantly emphasized rejection of Russian modernism, the novel can be regarded as one of the artistic epilogue of the Silver age. Drawing readers’ attention on specific traits of the mentality and the culture of last pre-revolution years as well as on the Moscow’s mode of life, I. Bunin unconsciously recreates the plot that is similar to the one that was formed in Mandelstam’s and Tsvetaeva’s dialogue. We paid particular attention exactly to the similarity of two plots that contradicts the genre difference of texts. She, who considers Moscow Rus to be hers, tries to get Him acquainted with this world (he was alienated from it before because of various reasons). The investigation focuses on some details that correspond in the novel and the poetic dialogue. For example, we analyze characters’ involvement in natural and religious calendar as well as the connection between these references and the sense of boundary and coming historical catastrophe. The topos of Moscow as «the strange city» appears to be significant; the city turns out to be the center, whose place of trial is Kremlin cathedrals with «their Italian and Russian soul». However, in spite of consistence of exact coincidences and the probability of the lyrical dialogue’s influence on the prosaic text where correspondence of Tsvetaeva and V. Muromtseva- Bunina could have been the mediator, we are convinced that we have the similarity of typological character that can be explained by common initial realia. Thus, the novel Pure Monday on the one hand and the lyrical dialogue of Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva on the other becomes the representatives of the single «Moscow text about the Silver age of Russian culture». It should be noted that those things that were conceptualized by Tsvetaeva as her personal experience were seen by Bunin from the time perspective and interpreted as the historical experience of Russia.

Keywords: marina tsvetaeva, osip mandelshtam, ivan bunin, pure monday, «moscow text», poetic dialogue

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